It is known that viscous materials are utilized in some industries. Such applications include sealants for mechanical or electrical components, adhesives, pastes for use in forming electrical or electronic circuits, solders for use in mounting electronic components, etc. Such viscous materials are used in the aerospace industry, the electrical industry, the electronics industry, etc.
In some cases, a viscous material is transferred and filled from a container into a syringe, in order to improve the convenience of applying the viscous material to a target object. In these cases, during the filling process when the viscous material flows and is divided, it is possible that gases will be unintentionally entrapped in the viscous material. In addition, in case gases have been undesirably entrapped in the viscous material, there are the problems that the quantities of the viscous material intermittently dispensed from the syringe will undesirably vary with time, and that, at the ultimate stage when the viscous material is used after being cured, undesirable voids will be formed within the cured viscous material.
In an attempt to solve these problems, Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2002-80005 discloses a prior-art technique of evacuating an air-tight chamber in which a container and a syringe are placed, to thereby evacuate the interiors of the container and the syringe, and extruding a viscous material from the container to the syringe by applying an external mechanical force to the viscous material within the container while the interiors are subjected to a vacuum.